Pursued (The Diamond Tycoons 2) (15 page)

Fifteen

N
ic woke alone.

Again.

At first he couldn’t believe that she was really gone—how could he after the night they’d had? She’d made love to him as if he was her everything, as if he was the only thing, and he’d tried to make love to her the same way. Tried to tell her with his actions what she wouldn’t yet believe if he told her in words—that he was in love with her. That he wanted to spend the rest of his life making her, and the baby, as happy as she made him.

Telling himself that she was up before the alarm only so she could pack, he pulled on a pair of sweats and headed toward the kitchen to see if maybe she was making a cup of tea for herself. Or breakfast. Or—

Except the kitchen was empty. As was the rest of the house—he knew because, like an idiot, he checked every single room. She was in none of them. And he didn’t know why.

She hadn’t seemed angry at Marc last night. He’d been furious at his brother—was still furious—but she’d seemed strangely understanding. Had even urged Nic to get over his anger and talk to Marc about what he’d said, even though it was the last thing Nic wanted to do.

So why was she gone? Had he upset her somehow? Had he been too rough with his lovemaking? Had he hurt her? Just the thought made him sick to his stomach, and he headed back to his room to grab his phone and call her.

But when he picked it up, he saw that she had beaten him to the punch. There was a series of text messages from her that told him everything he needed to know.

I’m sorry, Nic. This isn’t working. I thought I could do this, but I can’t. I still plan to have the baby, and of course, you can have as large or small a part in his life as you would like. But the whole being-in-a-relationship, living-together thing…it just isn’t for me. I’ll have your stuff delivered to your office this week. My only request is that you don’t contact me until I contact you. And I will, I promise. Just not for a little while. Thank you for everything.

Don’t contact me.

Thank you for everything.

Don’t contact me.

Thank you for everything.

He read the message over a dozen times. Two dozen times. Until he had it memorized so well that he didn’t even need to look at it anymore and still it played in his head.

This isn’t working.

Don’t contact me.

Thank you for everything.

Shocked and devastated—more devastated than he had any right to be considering how little time he’d known her—he sank down onto the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. And tried to figure out what the hell had happened. What he’d done wrong. How he’d spooked her.

He was a savvy businessman and an even savvier student of human nature—he had to be to do the job he did. And yet, this time, he had nothing. Yes, Marc had attacked her at the gala, but she was the one who had stopped Nic from defending her. She was the one who had defended Marc, for God’s sake. And even after that, she hadn’t seemed to hold it against Nic. Instead, she’d come home with him. She’d made love to him, had let him make love to her. And it had been everything their first night together had been, only more. Because this time they’d known it meant something.

Or at least, he’d
thought
it had meant something. Now, sitting here in an empty bed that still smelled of her, he wasn’t sure it had meant anything at all.

Suddenly, he wasn’t sure of anything when it came to Desi and him and the relationship he’d been trying so hard to build with her. For the baby’s sake…and for his.

Because he loved this woman, loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone. And though a lot of people would say it was ridiculous to fall in love with someone so quickly, he knew that wasn’t the case. Because he hadn’t fallen in love with Desi over the past few days as they’d tried to figure out what to do with the baby.

He’d fallen in love with her that night, nineteen weeks ago, when he’d brought her home and made love to her as if his life depended on it. Because, it turned out, it did. It really did. The life he wanted, the life he was so desperate for—with her and him and their baby—did depend on it.

And he would have sworn she felt it, too. If not that first night, then certainly last night, when they’d made love again and again and again. When he’d whispered in her ear and kissed her rounded stomach and nearly cried with how right it had all felt. When he’d held her in his arms and talked about anything and everything, including their baby and the future that they shared.

Damn it, he couldn’t have been that wrong. He couldn’t have imagined the look on her face or the love in her voice or the aching tenderness of her touch. He couldn’t have imagined all of that.

Which meant she hadn’t answered all of his questions after all. Because the one thing she was missing, the one answer she hadn’t given him, was why.

And as he sat there, smartphone clutched in his hand and his heart on the floor, he knew it was the only answer that mattered.

He got to her apartment—to their apartment—before she did.

As he bounded down the stairs from the roof, he prayed he wasn’t too late. That she would talk to him, listen to him and give him a chance to somehow fix whatever had gone so terribly wrong.

He hit the apartment at a dead run, spent a good five minutes knocking on the door—and listening for sounds within—as he pleaded with her to let him in before it occurred to him that a helicopter was a lot faster than a car and that Desi hadn’t even made it home yet.

Once that realization dawned, he’d stood there for long seconds trying to decide between respecting her wishes and waiting outside or going in and having the element of surprise on his side. It wasn’t much of a debate—he needed every bit of help he could get.

He let himself into the apartment they’d managed to share successfully for only a short while. Because he couldn’t just sit—especially not on Desi’s hideously ugly and uncomfortable couch—he paced the apartment while he waited, going over the arguments he’d formulated in his head on the helicopter ride up. As he stood in her apartment, watching the sun rise over the City of Angels, he couldn’t help thinking that none of the arguments were good enough.

He was desperately afraid that nothing was, that there would be no way to convince her that he wanted her, that he needed her. That he loved her.

He was still angsting over it, still trying to decide the best way to make his case, when the front door opened. And then she was there, in the foyer, staring at him with wide and exhausted eyes.

He stared back. He could do nothing else.

They stood like that for long seconds, staring at each other, a million unspoken words and thoughts and feelings arcing between them like a live wire.

And then she moved, breaking the connection between them as she dropped her overnight bag on the floor at her feet. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I came for you.” It wasn’t what he’d practiced, wasn’t what he’d planned to say at all. But it was real and it was honest, which was all he had to give since she’d refused everything else.

She breathed out then, a long, slow thing that seemed to take more than air. It took her bones, her muscles, her very will, too, because the next thing he knew, she was slumped on the floor, sobbing into her knees.

He was across the apartment in a moment, dropping beside her and murmuring, “No, Desi, no. Baby, please don’t cry. I’m sorry. Whatever it is I did, I’m so, so sorry.”

That only made her cry harder. He didn’t know if it was emotional or hormonal or a little bit of both, but it broke his heart to see her in so much pain. Nearly killed him to think that he had somehow been the cause of it. When he could take it no more, he ignored her hands pushing him away and pulled her into his lap.

“Don’t—”

“Shh,” he told her, one hand cupping her head while the other stroked her back. “Just relax and let me take care of you.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me,” she said even as her hands came up to curl in his shirt.

“Believe me, I am well aware of that fact.” He continued to rock her anyway. “But I need to hold you right now. Please, let me hold you.”

She kept crying, but she didn’t protest again. She just curled into a ball on his lap and sobbed into his chest. And sobbed. And sobbed. And sobbed.

When he could take it no more, when his heart was in danger of breaking wide open under the force of her sorrow, he bent his head. Brushed soft kisses over her temples and down her cheek. And pleaded, “Desi, please, tell me what’s wrong. Let me help. Please, sweetheart—”

He broke off as she stiffened in his arms, flashed back to the last time he’d called her sweetheart and what her reaction had been. “I’m sorry—”

“Stop saying that,” she told him as her tears died down. “None of this is your fault. It’s mine.”

“It’s ours,” he told her. “I’m doing something that’s pushing you away, and whatever it is, I’m sorry for it. But please, Desi, you have to talk to me. You can’t just walk away like we’re nothing. You’re carrying my baby—”

“I already said you could see the baby whenever you want.”

“And I appreciate that. I do. But it’s not just the baby I want.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do mean it.”

“You can’t.” She struggled against his hold, climbing off his lap the second he let her go.

He was up in a second, following her across the apartment—at least until she held up a hand and said, “Stop. Just…stop for a second, please.”

“Yeah, okay.” He froze in place. “Sure.”

She laughed then, and somehow it was the saddest sound he’d ever heard. “Why do you have to be so perfect?” she asked.

“I’m not—”

“You are. I knew it that first night. Everything about you was so, so right for me, and it scared the hell out of me. It sent me running away from you as far and as fast as I could go. And it would have been okay. If you had just stayed gone, everything would have been all right. Instead you’re here and you’re breaking my heart—”

“I don’t want to break your heart,” he told her, crossing to her because he couldn’t not touch her when he told her this. “And I don’t want you to break mine. I love you. I’m in love with you, Desi, and I want to be with you. I want to marry you. Why is that so hard for you to understand?”

“Because no one ever has.”

“Wanted to marry you?” He hoped not. He hated the very idea of her being close enough to another man to even entertain the idea.

“Loved me.”

“That can’t be true.”

She bowed her head, wrapped her arms around her stomach in a move that was so obviously self-protective that it broke his heart. “It is true. No one has ever loved me. I mean, except my mother and she died when I was nine, so…it’s been a while.

“My dad freaked out when she died. He couldn’t handle it and he certainly couldn’t handle me. He was a reporter, too. One of the best investigative journalists in the world. And the day after my mother’s funeral, he parked me with my grieving grandparents and took off to find a war to cover.

“He came back a few months later, just in time to have a fight with my grandmother and take me off her hands. Not because he wanted anything to do with me, mind you, but to punish her for saying he was being a terrible dad. Two weeks later, he dumped me on his college roommate and his wife, and took off again. Six months later he showed back up because they were having their own kid and didn’t want me around anymore. So he brought me to visit his sister and snuck out on her in the middle of the night.

“The night he left, I knew he was going to go. He called me sweetheart when I went up to bed. And I knew. He only ever called me sweetheart right before he left me. My aunt kept me for three months before she shipped me off to my mother’s brother. And that’s pretty much how it went until I graduated high school and left for college.

“And you know the worst part? At the gala last night, I realized I’ve done all this for him. I worked like a dog to get a degree in journalism from Columbia. I’ve spent two years writing ridiculous articles that I don’t care about for the
Los Angeles Times
. I took the assignment on Bijoux, even knowing that I shouldn’t have, and we all know how that turned out. I did it all, hoping that one day he’d be proud of me. That one day he would come back and see what I’d done and he’d tell me I’d done a good job.” Her voice broke. “How pathetic is that? How ridiculous and pathetic am I?”

“You’re not pathetic at all.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

She wouldn’t look at him. He wanted, so badly, to see her face, but she wouldn’t lift her head. Wouldn’t let him see.

Jesus. He didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to say, how he could talk about this without sounding like a total douche. Sure, he’d had absentee parents—a father who cared more about screwing around with women half his age than he ever did about his family and a mother who cared more about status than she did about her husband screwing around on her—but through it all, Nic had always had a home. He always knew where he was going to be sleeping and what his routine would be like and whom he would see at school. And he’d always, always, had Marc. His brother might be a busybody with trust issues a mile wide, but he was a great big brother. He’d never once been anywhere but in Nic’s corner.

Who had been in Desi’s corner? he wondered as she put on the kettle for tea. Who’d had her back when she’d needed it most? The idea that there had been no one, that the woman he loved had essentially been on her own at the age of nine, wounded him on a visceral level.

“That’s why you kept the baby. So you’d have someone to love you.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged as she put a tea bag in a cup. “I thought about having an abortion but I just…couldn’t. And I could never give him up for adoption. I’d go crazy wondering if he was okay, if he was with someone who loved him or if he was just—” Her voice broke, but she swallowed. Tried again. “Or if he was just being tolerated. I can’t stand the idea of him being anywhere he isn’t loved.”

Nic did cross to her then, did pull her into his arms and let his hands rest on her tummy. On their baby.